Does traffic has correlation with search engine ranking?

[montyauto]

To increase search engine ranking, we need to take care on metatag, look for quality link partner, keywords in paragraph, quality related info, smartpage..

But some one say that if our website traffic increase, search engine ranking will increase as well.

Will that be true?

[SkGold]

But some one say that if our website traffic increase, search engine ranking will increase as well.
Will that be true?

If you mean by traffic - unique visitors - then yes, it will. :wink:

[Simon Gooffin]

Hi montyauto and welcome to our support forums!

Nobody knows how google ranks the sites and all we can do is just to imagine what algorithm it has. Of course there are many parameters that are taking in account. And traffic can be among them. Personally I think traffic will not affect site positions in SERPs seriously (if it affects at all). It is more true good positions in google affect traffic :)

[SkGold]

Personally I think traffic will not affect site positions in SERPs seriously (if it affects at all).
Believe me it does. :) SE didn’t put to much weight on it yet, but they increasing this factor more and more. It has been tested and if the site has good positions in serps but don’t have good CTR, eventually this site will go down more and more. Why do they keep your site on the top of their serps if nobody is interesting in it? On the top of it, if somebody clicking on your site in serps, but hitting the back button right away it affect as well. Once again it is not a huge factor yet, but…

Why do you think the Google provide and invite everybody to use their analytics for free, just because they so nice? No, they are using the data from analytics to improve their algorithms. So it is very important to make your site interesting and keep your visitors on it as long as you can. :)

[Simon Gooffin]

I'm pretty sure you know what you say.. Thanks a lot for the useful info.

[dangsoftsolutions]

Hello,

Real and Unique traffic always help in search engine ranking.

There are many hit generators in market I have tried all of them but there is no use because because when u get link hit from google and from unique then only it help else not.

Because google is aware of such softwares.

I have spend alots on such hit softwares all fake.

Thanks

[OWG]

Traffic has absolutely no bearing on the position in the search engines. SK Gold, would you care to cite some of these tests?

[SkGold]

SKGold, would you care to cite some of these tests?
Sure, why not, you can also test it yourself if you like. It is not so hard.

Here is approximately what we did. The test has been done one year ago. One page website has been created. Site was optimized for certain key phrase (not competitive). Some back links has been provided from our existing sites until we got some ranking. Then almost all back links has been removed. We left only 5 or them. After we start generate clicks from SERPs using 20 different IPs, approximately 20 clicks from each IP daily, for 4 month. No other techniques have been used. Results:
1. Yahoo – ranking increased. We achieved position #8 in 3 month for our test key phrase. Additional month didn’t affect anything. Position dropped to # 23 after we stopped clicks.
2. Google – ranking increased. We achieved position #12 in 2 month, and then site has been banned.
3.MSN – no effect at all.

OWG, you can make conclusions now.

BTW it is not only me who is telling this. Aaron Wall mention about Yahoo several times on his blog. I also saw some opinions from other SEO gurus. I am not going to dig right now, but when I will come across this stuff again I will post the links here.
Traffic has absolutely no bearing on the position in the search engines.
OWG, when you posting affirmations like this, do you have any evidence?

[OWG]

When I asked you to cite the tests I meant the scientific test data from reputable sources (I am not saying your not a reputable source) That said, your tests are totally unscientific as there is no control. For an SEo (or any ) test to work you must have a control that backs up what happens. In your case there might have been people building links to those sites without your knowing it.

Indeed, something might have been happening for the one site to be banned. The gradual improvement you saw could also have been from links ageing couldn't it? Or additional links being added. the ageing benefit of anchor text being applied would also slowly move you up.

Please do not think that I am putting you down, as although I have no doubt that over time dat stats from the toolbar etc will be filtered in, any affect at the moment is IMO not measurable.

That is the beauty of SEo though, we all disagree ;)

[SkGold]

That is the beauty of SEo though, we all disagree
I would absolutely agree with this. Please don’t take it personally as well. :wink:

Of course I cannot give you all test details on the forum. Believe me the test we did was controlled as much as we can. Links were monitored and other variables have been counted in our conclusion. We are still doing this test and many other algorithmic tests using different sites and changing different variables all the time.

It is always easy to criticize and simply state that it doesn’t work. At least we have something to support our theory. Do you have anything to support your strong statement?
Traffic has absolutely no bearing on the position in the search engines.
OWG, can you provide any scientific test data from reputable sources (I am not saying your not a reputable source)? :) :) :)

[OWG]

OWG, can you provide any scientific test data from reputable sources (I am not saying your not a reputable source)?

Touche' :D

All I can say is that data collected in tests from sites that have been exposed to massive amounts of traffic from being bombed to the top of sites like Digg etc. have shown that there has been no increase in position in the serps. Beyond that nope I can not provide anything.

Also bear in mind that Google have stated to the FTC that there is ABSOLUTELY no link between adwords and Organic listings. So unless google are running a script that removes all referrals from adwords (even on the content network) from their traffic element of the Algorithm, then they would be lying to their government.

Also often when people say 'search engine', I take them to be talking about Google, as in the UK there IS no other search engine. Google have over 83% of the market share here.

[subseo]

I believe that's the traffic from search results, not from sites like Digg nor Adwords, that's what is discussed as a factor in the rankings.

I had this, totally unscientific, experience, say a year, maybe even more ago. I found google results didn't show direct links but redirects (but only on some searches I believe...long time ago anyway), so I thought they must be tracking the clicks, why else would they do it.
So I started clicking steadily on my website, which was in a very small niche that's not much searched for, and the site was pretty much stable (read "abandoned") so I know there were no new links for it at least for a year, and during experiment as well.

Before the experiment, it was ranking in 10-20. After experiment, the site moved to top 10 when I did a search from where I live (non-US), but it was still in 10-20 when doing a search through a US based IP.

Again, totally unscientific. But my common sense thinking is if they don't do it already, they should. After all if it is said that their algorithm has tens if not above hundred of various factors, I can't even imagine what all bizarre things it might include if that's true. Click-through from search results would at least make a sense (to me).

[OWG]

Google Do track clicks, they have been doing it for over 2 years now. have a look at the source code and you will see the code that says. onmousedown report the position of the link in the SERP.

It is just not known what they do with it though. I was told (by a Google employee) that it is used to measure relevance. If they bring a change to the algo, and the average clcik position goes up, then the SERP's are less relevant. If they go down, then they are more.

[SkGold]

Again, totally unscientific. But my common sense thinking is if they don't do it already, they should. After all if it is said that their algorithm has tens if not above hundred of various factors, I can't even imagine what all bizarre things it might include if that's true. Click-through from search results would at least make a sense (to me).
I totally agree with you.

------------------------------------------------------

Defiantly (IMO) that Yahoo and Google use it. From my experiment and from a lot of other evidence around the net :poisk: I am sure (99.9) that they do.

Ya, all evidence from unscientific experiments. But can anybody show me any “scientific” (:dance2:) experiment on any SE algorithm factor. Do we have “scientific” prove that keywords in title increasing ranking?

On the top of SEO (that now I deem as my main profession) I have M.Sc. in chemistry. Believe me I know what is scientific experiment means and how to do it.

:good: :poka:

[pipc01]

Imo google and yahoo (google2) both use a click counter as a part of their relevancy to site verses search results. No, I am neither a guru nor an educated man, I am in fact self taught, but as google is so mysterious and clever, it makes sense that click through has some relevancy, for example when placing an adword on google, you have the choice of adding x amount of adverts, which google admits to stop showing and concentrate on the higher click through ads, if the advert returns a low click through. If it can do this with adwords, it can do this with individual sites. just an opinion.